


Citizens of Tomorrow

by stepquietly



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, F/F, Femslash, Podfic Welcome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-25
Updated: 2014-03-25
Packaged: 2018-01-16 23:37:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1365916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stepquietly/pseuds/stepquietly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Hey baby, are your surfaces metal? Because I can see myself in them.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Citizens of Tomorrow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stellarer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellarer/gifts).



> Big thanks go to [](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hazel/pseuds/hazel)[](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hazel/pseuds/hazel)**hazel** for beta reading this.

For the record, it’s not that Amy’s a suck up; she’s just programmed that way.

“For the record, that’s a lie,” Peralta blares out of his voice-mount. “I have personally checked over every inch of Santiago’s circuitry board” -

“Kinky,” Gina drawls from where she’s sprawled face-first over her desk.

“ - and I’d like you all to know that there’s not one binary trace of follow the leader playing in there,” Peralta concludes, pointing at Amy. “Santiago just loves conferencing with our resident controlbot.”

Amy whirls around. “That’s - I -” Then, having processed what Peralta just said, “Wait, when did _you_ receive clearance to check out my circuitry board?” She puts her hand over the panel in question and checks its lock. Twice.

Peralta twinkles his ocular lenses at her. “I didn’t. But you just confirmed my suspicions. _Boom_! Best detective robot, at your service!” He holds up a hand and Boyle zooms over on two wheels to high-five it.

“I think the board would beg to disagree on that one.” Amy takes a great deal of satisfaction in pointing to the grid board of arrests where she’s leading Peralta 92 to 87. The other robots in the room clap and she bows deeply, taking her moment, before Peralta lobs a bolt at her head.

“Hey!”

“Oh, just lock interfaces already and put the rest of us out of our misery!” Gina calls out, still face-down, but somehow managing to work her communication console without any actual face time.

Peralta cheeses it up for the crowd. “Hey, I’m a three date kinda robot. Santiago hasn’t taken me out even once.”

Rosa laughs, low and husky and not robotic at all, and Amy wonders, not for the first time, how she does that. “Be real, Peralta. We’ve all seen you at the service centre. Your interface booster doesn’t even have its cap on anymore.”

Amy could kiss Rosa for the intervention. “Yeah, I’d be too afraid to get a virus,” Amy points out, looking as superior as possible while still holding a hand over her circuitry panel.

Peralta’s got his mouth open to respond when -

“I have a virus,” Hitchcock beeps.

“ _Of course_ you do,” Peralta says, resigned.

Scully backs him up. “He really does. Full system reboot last week but it didn’t take. It’s gone deep.” Hitchcock’s next four beeps sound progressively discordant, and a small amount of motor oil leaks from his hinges.

“Ew,” Amy mutters, and everyone reflexively shifts their chairs away from Hitchcock.

“I’m glad to see that so much work is getting done in our absence,” booms Controlbot Holt from where he’s just entering the room with T.E.R.R.Y., who gives everyone a put-upon look.

“We were just discussing our current high solve rate, sir,” Amy points out, and everyone groans around her. “ _What_? We were!” Gina and Rosa boo and throw a couple of smaller file casings at her, and Amy ducks back into her seat resentfully.

Holt looks right at her, the expressionless surface of his face panel still managing to mock her. “I’m glad your solve rate involves Peralta’s missing screwcap -”

“Lost in the line of duty, sir!” Peralta cheerfully calls out, shameless as always.

“- and Hitchcock’s current round of reboots -”

“They think they’re going to have to wipe his mainframe completely and upload his last clean scan,” Scully informs them, while Hitchcock blurps twice, still oozing motor oil.

“- but we have actual work to do here,” Holt soldiers on, ignoring the interruptions, his faceplate lighting up with grim straight voice lines.

“Yessir. No more sex talk in the workplace, sir,” Amy blurts out, contrite. She takes her seat before she processes her own words and can actually feel the way her circuits warm as her upgrades kick in to process the increased levels of mortification.

T.E.R.R.Y. looks at her with a mix of horror and disappointment, and Amy does her best to sit up straight and look like she deserves to be there. She even ignores the way Peralta snickers while replaying an autotune voice-grab of her saying “sex talk in the workplace”, voice deepened and slowed, now set to a Barry Manilow song that he and Gina are grooving along to in the back.

“Peralta, stop that,” Controlbot Holt calls out, and Amy feels again, deep in her circuitboards, the conviction that this controlbot is meant to be her external remote compliance center, to guide her to someday making controlbot herself.

Holt checks through the readouts on his communication panels and issues their instructions. “Santiago, Diaz, there’s a street gang out by the corner of the fire station that’ve been causing some trouble with graffiti. Check it out. Peralta, since you’re so good with music, you can join Hitchcock and Scully in the voice analysis labs today.”

Peralta moans, and slumps back in his chair. Scully pats him on the back. “Don’t worry, Peralta; Hitchcock and I are done with a whole 5% already.” Hitchcock lets out a high-pitched beeping noise and oozes a strange clear lubricant, and Peralta jerks away while Scully takes off his shirt to wipe it up.

Amy smugly notes Peralta’s horror - _serves him right_ \- before she turns back to listen to Holt hand out the rest of the assignments.

“Boyle, you and T.E.R.R.Y. are on the reports for the Shapiro murder. I want those printouts finalised today and on my desk.”

“Yes, sir,” Boyle says, and immediately starts printing and laminating the required files.

“That’s it. Dismissed.” Holt heads back to his conference terminal, followed by T.E.R.R.Y.

Amy can’t resist wandering over to Peralta to gloat. “Guess it pays to be the suck up, huh?”

He glowers at her, and she’s about to rub his face in it some more when Rosa grabs the back of her jacket and forces her to trot out of there.

“Come on, I have shit to get done today,” Rosa says, yanking Amy along without the single sound of a strained whirr. Amy isn’t stupid enough to resist.

“Sure,” she says, conciliatory, like it’s every day she’s dragged out of the precinct by her casing. “I’m with you. Let’s go.”

* * *

 

It turns out the street gang is actually a really organised artist collective, and they’ve got enough extra money floating around to be able to afford a bunch of shoot-to-paint guns. With the images already loaded and four of them hiding behind the cars and hydrants in the vicinity of the fire station, it’s a free for all in terms of them shooting pre-imaged paintings onto any available surface.

Amy’s all for the arts but not so much when it’s a bunch of teenage civilians shooting pictures of a mustached Mona Lisa over her recently cleaned chrome surface. They’d barely driven up before those hoodlums had opened fire, and now she and Rosa are hiding behind the car trying not to get paint everywhere.

“Civilians,” she calls out, using her voice module at its highest setting, “we don’t wish to harm you, but you must cease and desist. Else we will be authorised to use our force at level three.”

“Great,” Rosa mutters from next to her, “threaten a bunch of kids with a sharp scolding. We should just go to level two already and beat the shit out of them.” Rosa’s leather jacket and slim-line body armour had just narrowly missed being painted with half a mustached Girl with the Pearl Earring, and Amy can see how Rosa would be not cool with that.

“We need to give them adequate warning,” Amy reminds her. “It’s in the rulebook.”

Rosa looks at her, the narrow planes of her frame radiating annoyance. “Really,” she says, dispassionately. “How about you stand up right now and see how that works out for you?”

Amy really doesn’t want to - she can hear the kids loading new art frames into their gun even from across the street - but she can’t just let Rosa escalate this confrontation yet either. That’s not how most bots make controlbot.

“Citizens, hold your fire,” she calls out, and stands up. “We repeat our warning and ask you to -” The paint that hits her in the face suspends her announcement, and she ends up ducking down behind the car with Rosa again while the kids on the other side of the road cheer and hoot, wiping frantically at her faceplate.

“Told you. Those shits aren’t going to listen to reason yet.” Rosa pulls her hands away and peers in. “They got you good,” she observes, voice shading towards amused.

“How bad is it?” Amy’s can barely see out of her faceplate right now, covered as it is in paint, but she can see enough of Rosa’s glazed copper surface to tell that she’s smiling, mouth curved.

“You’ve got a mustached Frida Kahlo right on the faceplate.”

“So you’re saying I’ve got a unibrow and a mustache going.” Amy’s going to kill those kids.

Rosa laughs. “It’s actually not bad. The kids have decent aim, at least.” Her hands slide over the paint-covered surfaces of Amy’s face before she rubs her fingers together, checking. “And the stuff’s quick drying too. Chances are we’re gonna need some turpentine to get this stuff off.”

“These kids are going down,” Amy vows, scraping away enough paint for her motion sensors to still function. “We’re going to level two. Let’s taze the shit out of them.”

Rosa grins at her, looking hungry and vengeful, sleek weapon systems unfolding from under all her copper and leather, unlocked to her deadlier potential. “ _Yeah_.”

Amy swallows, sensors fixed on the smooth way Rosa’s systems come online, the soft burr of voltage charging. Her own single gun system reveals itself with a clear snick, loading a crowd net.

Rosa nods at her, analysing and discarding options while she checks the surface of the gun for any hindrance from the paint, smoothing along its barrel and back to where the trigger mechanism sits snug at the base of Amy’s spine.

There’s a heaviness to the air between them, the smell of ozone and oil in the air that makes Amy’s circuits buzz.

Rosa reaches forward and thumbs at Amy’s faceplate, slides her hand round to trace the surface of her gun and down to her paint-splattered communication port, still shiny despite all the years Amy’s been in service.

“First time I’ve seen you get dirty, Santiago,” Rosa says thoughtfully, and Amy feels her feedback control grow warm with the sudden surge of electricity under her surface.

“I’m not usually much for… the dirt,” she says, and then wants to put herself offline because _what_.

Rosa laughs at her. “I can tell, all your late night polishing like Holt’s gonna give you an inspection any day now.” Rosa’s thumb is still pressed up against Amy’s port when she leans in to offer, voice low and carefully modulated, “I can help you get some turpentine, clean you up before work tomorrow. Shine you up a bit, maybe exchange some software.”

Amy swallows, caught in the headlights of Rosa’s regard.

“Yeah,” she whispers when she can finally get her voice circuitry online again, “please,” leaning forward so her chrome plates press against Rosa’s slim surfaces, so Rosa can feel the way her circuitry is buzzing. “I’d… I’d like that.” For the first time in a really long time, she has the urge to override her primary command profiles and leave these kids to their thing, drag Rosa somewhere and show her how much Amy’d love to interface with her.

Rosa maybe gets that because she moves away, takes her hand off Amy’s port and her panels away from where they’re touching and crawls around to the other side of the car. “Work first, Santiago,” she says. “Let’s get these idiots sorted out. Then we can talk about a software exchange.”

“Right, sure. That. - I can - that,” Amy says, systems whirring and fired up, smile stretching Frida Kahlo’s mustache wide, “let’s do this thing!”

* * *

 

“How was the arrest?” Peralta asks them the next day while they’re typing up their report, slumping over the desk of Amy’s console like his joints need an upgrade.

“Easy,” Rosa tells him, voice amused and leering, one boot pressed up warm, high against Amy’s thigh. “All sorts of good, clean fun.”

“I feel like that’s dirty, but I don’t get it at all,” Peralta says, confused, and Amy ducks her head to hide her own smile, surfaces sparkling under the squad lights.


End file.
